Backing up setting through Luci does not seem sufficient for my use case as I have a lot of custom changes to the filesystem, samba shares, etc… Can anyone tell me the series of steps to create a copy of my firmware?
Sorry, not sure what that’s supposed to mean. I’m asking how to create a firmware image and you’re showing me a section of Luci where I can set individual files/folders to be preserved when I upgrade. I never said anything about upgrading. I don’t want to maintain a list of every single file I’ve ever modified, I just want to occasionally create a firmware image for backup purposes. That is a pretty common use case.
OK, you want to build a firmware by yourself. You can use Imagebuilder to create a firmware quickly.
Actually, I believe they want to use your firmware, make custom changes, then back the whole firmware up for loading onto other routers.
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So imagebuilder is the best choice. They can place the modified configuration files in files folder, then rebuild it.
Sorry to resurrect this old post. There’s no way to do this with dd?
Not following what you want to do. The firmware is the firmware, and you can roll your own with imagebuilder. But unless you do an upgrade of the firmware it stays there. You can save the .bin file when you download it or create it.
All the customizations go into /etc, not into the firmware. When you reboot, they are all still there. When you reset, that directory is erased and you can start over.
So if you want to backup the whole shebang, Luci will backup all of /etc plus anything else you specify, and that plus anything you’ve created outside the directory. Then if you want to restore back to where you were, just reset to defaults, install Luci if you have to, and restore the backup.
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